Friday, January 25, 2008

The Hasbro boycott continues

In true Facebook fashion, a group was formed to help save Scrabulous, but to no avail. It looks like Facebook has complied, as the application is no longer active. There’s now an error page where the board game application used to be. And while it hasn’t been confirmed that Scrabulous is gone forever, this recent development appears to show Facebook’s compliance with Hasbro and Mattel.

Wrong! Having just played in several games I can report that Scrabulous is far from dead. There is no question that it is on life-support, however.

Hasbro, in trying to take Scrabulous down is pursuing a last century business strategy and it's a big mistake. They need Scrabulous just like a rock band needs their music played -- bootlegged or not. Scrabulous has helped to pull Scrabble from the pile of obscurity and created millions of new players in the process.

If Hasbro had half-a-brain they would be embracing Scrabulous by either ignoring it, or by cutting Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla a sweet financial deal. The worst thing that could happen is to have the game go away. Where I don't know the numbers, if I was guessing I'd say that analog Scrabble sales have soared since Scrabulous exploded onto the Facebook scene. Hasbro couldn't buy this sort of promotion at any price.